painter's words...
"the apple is red,
red forever the leaves where memory, like water,
seeps and sinks,
ever beyond two layers,
unnoticed and unobserved.
the horns of autumn are lifted beyond the woods,
compelling and sweet.
the frost moves, covers and bites in silence.
september sends down to us its message,
a yellow leaf whirling in ecstasy,
before sleep,
before death.
the dragon fly lights on the grey bark of tree
and is gone to some distant point of sky.
where does the round moon live?
red forever the leaves where memory, like water,
seeps and sinks,
ever beyond two layers,
unnoticed and unobserved.
the horns of autumn are lifted beyond the woods,
compelling and sweet.
the frost moves, covers and bites in silence.
september sends down to us its message,
a yellow leaf whirling in ecstasy,
before sleep,
before death.
the dragon fly lights on the grey bark of tree
and is gone to some distant point of sky.
where does the round moon live?
where does the round moon live?
are the trees afire in the crimson sunset?
the eye is seen and remembered through other eyes.
the horizons are numberless as falling drops of rain.
the eye opens,
the first silent movement of the day.
the eyes are not related in unison."
excerpt of a poem by painter mark tobey, 1952... and speaking of painter's writings, tonight i will be giving a short reading of some of my own text works in the grand company of anne tardos and simone forti. information here.
Labels: anne tardos, mark tobey, poetry by painters, simone forti
4 Comments:
This is beautiful!!! What book is it from, if you don't mind me asking? (Nice to think of the twining of text and image, painting and writing (or reading)...)
I also like the fact that this Tobey poem can live next door to a tribute to Evel Knievel... ;-)
I hope your own reading went well...
indeed...these are great!
it's from a nice catalog called mark tobey art and belief from 1984 and has also some interesting pieces on his work and also he as a big bahai faith guy. i bought it in 84, and it was about the time i started to get really interested in artist's writings (have you ever read alfred kubin's novel? you would love it) and i remember standing in the bookstore trying to decide if i should buy the book because there's only 4 or 5 pages of his writing, but i've gone back to it many times. there might be more somewhere else, not sure. indeed i wasn't sure about posting something on evel for the blog, but what the hell, the mix of influences and inspirations we all hold are not always comfortable together :-) thanks for asking about the reading, i think it went really well. i can't say that i was very dynamic, but i managed to get the words out without passing out, and i felt it was a moment where i had to finally accept the texts as part of my real work and not "just something i do once in awhile". simone and anne were incredible readers, and i was glad i went first, and also realizing that this kind of performance of text will most likely not be a part of my activities much. it was like seeing a great indian musician play music, making me realize as much as i want my work to have that feeling, i will never be that "master musician". i'll continue to write, but will hardly be that kind of writer... simone and i also did an acoustic improvised sound piece at the end, and that was definitely wonderful all around!
Thank you!
I *do* have a nice hardcover of Kubin's novel and have been saving it on the shelf for a long time - sometimes when I've been looking forward to reading a particular book, it takes me a *really* long time to say "this is the time to read 'that' book." :-)
I like to hear writers reading their own work (oddly, I like it even better when it's in a language I don't understand), but I honestly don't know if a live reading - regardless of how wonderful the reader - ever comes close to the experience of reading the text alone, in my own atmosphere (at least for me)... And although I love to see/hear poets who are "masters" of the live reading, and who create a world outside the text, I must also admit that some of my favorite poets were not known to be particularly gifted "readers"... Of course, I realize it's not meant to mirror the "reading/internal listening" experience and is a "listening/internal reading" experience - maybe that's where preference inches in...
But you should post the text from seamarks to the text portion of your site... maybe? :-)
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